US Taliban Massacre investigation; An ironic moral mask

Barkat Shah Kakar

(Social Researcher and Academician)

University of Balochsitan Quetta

bshahkakar@yahoo.com

It was probably the first week of US air-strikes on the front line of Taliban militia which almost wiped out their integrity and a lost their hold on most parts of the Afghanistan. It was a harsh time for all those who had fled to Afghanistan from Pakistan and other parts of the Arab and central Asian countries. On the other end, the non Pashtoon entities being oppressed and harshly beaten by Taliban clergy during their reign over Kabul aroused to take revenge. On top of that the second good news that the US led allied forces announces a handsome amount for a single Talib and the Alqaeda fighters. The warlords who had gone into hibernation after Taliban took over come out of their caves and started hunting the left outs of the Taliban. There are hundreds of case studies which unfolds an absolute cruelty. One of the very prominent massacre of the 21st century history took place under the umbrella of the custodians of the individual's human rights, freedom and democracy. More than twenty thousands Taliban were hostage in the Kondoz valley. They were promised that after being unarmed they will be provided the status of free, but they were not even treated as prisoner of wars in accordance to the Geneva convention. The global electronic media, all over the world celebrated and displayed the declination of Taliban who's hands were tied with their arrogant black turbans. From the approximately 8,000 fighters who surrendered in Konduz only 500 to 800 were taken to Qala-i-Janghi. Soon information emerged that other Taliban had been murdered. Stories of the survivors of the Taliban prisoners of other Pashtoon captives in Kondoz. According to these survivors and witnesses, between 200 and 300 of the prisoners from Konduz were packed into each of the containers, which were ostensibly being used to take them to the prison at Sheberghan. Approximately half of the captives suffocated or were killed by shots fired by soldiers into the airtight containers. Others were executed as the containers were unloaded into a mass grave in the desert. According to the witnesses, American soldiers were present during this massacre.

These all were leaked in June 2002 from a report of the UN. The massacres which was carried out by Dostam and his criminal warlords was uncovered as a secondary product of the UN agencies while calculating the ruins of the, American aircraft and helicopters quelled on the revolt by Taliban prisoners at the fortress of Qala-i-Janghi near Mazar-i-Sharif, which was bombed from the air. Approximately 720 prisoners died as a result of the bombardment, with just 86 surviving the attack.

Following year January and February, a team from the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), based in Boston, visited a number of graves in the Mazar-i-Sharif and Sheberghan area. They come to the conclusion that two of the mass graves that they investigated were of recent origin. The team quoted testimony from inhabitants of the region, who claimed to have seen scores of bodies unloaded from container trucks and buried in the desert by bulldozers.

These stories of ruthlessness are all around us, The American president and Amnesty international awakened after the fossils of the bodies of these victims are decomposed. In most of the cases the warlord sold the ordinary people to the American and Britain forces who paid them in dollars. For such auction of the Taliban left outs or even of the ordinary Pakistani and Pashtoon folk in Afghanistan there was no excuse and mercy.

It looks quite ironical while the US higher leadership orders to investigate the massacres of Sheberghan. What about the 720 unarmed prisoners who were ruthlessly bombarded by the American aircrafts in Qala-e-Jangi?. There is nothing obscure in this case, both the offenders and the victims are quite evident and the offenders are alive and enjoys the same vantage positions. Similarly it is very symptomatic to heal a particular wound when it is worsened. How such atrocities could be stopped in future?. Who will punish countless direct beneficiaries, careerists, planners and war lords like Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, Charle Willson, Rashid Dostam, General Hamid Gull, Geneal Naseerullah Babar and many more who inflicted the flames of war in this region which cannot be extinguished till almost a half century. The US sympathies for such investigation are rightly illustrated by the great Urdu-Persian poet Mirza Ghalib.

Ki Meray Qatal Key Bad Us Nay Jaffa Say Tobba

Hai Es Zood-e-Pasheman Ka Pasheman Hona